Bing Desktop offers daily wallpaper that you can easily download onto your computer and set as the background of your desktop screen. In addition, the program offers other useful options – including autosave functionality for each day’s image as well as access to an extensive catalogue of past Bing images that you can browse and set as wallpapers.
Microsoft Bing Desktop requires additional permissions than most apps, such as access to your photo gallery and ability to launch automatically upon Windows startup. Declining these requests does not affect its functionality in any way.
The Bing Bar
The Bing Bar is a Microsoft toolbar for Internet Explorer that features Facebook integration as well as a newsfeed with weather, top stories and trending searches. Furthermore, it provides quick access to online information such as time zone conversions and fact lookup. Furthermore, its appearance and behavior can be customized using either taskbar settings icons or the Options drop-down menu – you can dock it to desktop screen layout, set search box as new tab page and change its color!
The bar can also provide breaking news updates, traffic and weather forecasts, status updates for Facebook friends by clicking their icon; and allows access to Bing Maps as well as photos/videos from newsfeed.
Though some users appreciate the Bing bar, others find it annoying and distraction. Users report finding it annoying that search bars keep popping up unnecessarily on desktop computers even though they can disable this feature by deselecting auto-launch. Furthermore, many are worried that Microsoft may collect their personal information and share it with Bing; especially if Bing replaces their current homepage provider such as Google or Yahoo.
Bing Images
Microsoft curates daily landscape or wildlife photographs for use as desktop wallpaper, using their Bing app. Images automatically download onto your computer; additionally there’s a slideshow option for lock screen use and you can manually add images from within the Bing app to Windows 11 desktops via Settings.
The Bing app also offers a collection of photos featured on its homepage for browsing or learning more about each photo’s origins. In addition, it provides trending news updates and intelligent answers for search queries; Bing Rewards lets users earn points simply for searching–earn points they can redeem for gift cards, sweepstakes entries, nonprofit donations and other rewards!
Bing offers an image-creation tool called Image Creator that uses an advanced version of OpenAI’s DALL-E model, producing high-quality digital drawings and paintings from written prompts. You can access this feature directly via Bing Chat or Edge to access Image Creator.
Bing can often provide images that better capture your prompt than what you could come up with on your own, though sometimes the picture it produces might not meet all your requirements; in such instances, ask additional questions such as “Can we change the monkey’s hat to blue color?”.
Bing News
Bing News is a search-based news service that delivers current event, sports, business and local news directly into the taskbar. Searches can be completed quickly using voice search without opening a browser; results also display without having to scroll. Furthermore, trending topics and intelligent answers can also be included within its search results. If available in your market, Microsoft Rewards allows users to earn points while they search – which can later be redeemed for gift cards, sweepstakes entries, nonprofit donations and more!
The new Bing search engine is an upgraded version of its predecessor and is powered by an improved form of GPT 3.5’s AI language model that underlies ChatGPT. Microsoft believes its upgraded Prometheus model provides faster responses with up-to-date and annotated answers than before.
In The Verge’s demo, Bing was able to provide news and events from recent history. For example, it answered queries regarding bands coming to Dublin this September with footnoted listings as to where it found this information. You could also rate answers thumbs up/down and provide Microsoft with feedback based on what works well or doesn’t.
As with other Microsoft products, the company strives to protect users from inappropriate or harmful content through both proactive and reactive algorithms, as well as manual interventions. For example, AI algorithms used for searching results could potentially exclude AS/RS that could lead to potentially harmful material without your knowing it – while PhotoDNA detects images for child sexual exploitation or abuse that might show up visually search features.
Bing Rewards
Microsoft is using its rewards system as one way of drawing users away from Google. You’ll earn points every time you use Bing search, Cortana or searching from Windows 10 Search Box – something Google cannot match!
Redeem credits for movies, games and nonprofit donations; in addition to earning points through autosuggest and related searches based on what was typed into the search bar or from last query run. As more searches and rewards program participation occur, your levels will increase, providing better rewards.
Search engine Bing offers fast and reliable results with an intuitive interface for searching the Web and images, making it a viable alternative to Google. However, switching solely for its advantages may be challenging when your main goal is avoiding its algorithms.
As your rewards page can change daily, be sure to visit often and explore what activities are available – quizzes and quests, games and trivia can quickly add up points, though if you are not an active searcher or have little free time it might not seem worth your while. Bing Rewards was created when Microsoft combined two earlier services: Club Bing and Live Search SearchPerks! into Bing Rewards in 2010.